"Ken Burns Effect" demonstration

I created this little video for Wikipedia to demonstrate the "Ken Burns Effect", a rather famous documentary film technique that's used pretty much everywhere. And what would be the better way to demonstrate it than (very badly) recreating "The Civil War" at 1 o'clock in the morning with a piece of animation software I've hardly even used and a few random pictures pulled from Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons? Yep... Well, here it is! Hope no one minds much.

Created in Synfig Studio ( http://www.synfig.org/ )

Category:

Education

Tags:

• panning
• ken
• burns
• wikipedia
• synfig

[XFuncCaRteR]

Ken Burns didn't invent basic documentary filmmaking techniques.

[wwwwolf]

@XFuncCaRteR In all fairness, he didn't come up with the name himself. Let's blame Apple. =)

[Strideo1]

Where is the mournful violin music and the old historians talking about the war?

[wwwwolf]

I believe the industry calls that "The Other Ken Burns Effect." =)

[cosycleaner]

Ken Morse - very famous 'Rostrum Cameraman' was using this technique for the BBC 40plus years ago...also see the BBC's legendary 'Great War' series of 1964 for more of the same. Ken Burns is an excellent film maker but don't credit him America with things he didn't invent!

[TheFanta913]

what the fuck its just zooming in ? am i missing something ?

[HellsKitchenNYCity]

This is NOT the Ken Burns effect. The foreground, middle ground, and background all move, pan, push, pull at different rates. All you did was pan and move picture around.

[robbyperez]

Isn't the Ken Burns effect... making documentaries???

[kozmon0t]

:51-end The smoke and mist cleared and revealed the fallen of both sides littering the field. Some lay on their backs, contorted in a wretched display of their final agonies, and staring skyward as if they sought mercy from the heavens, and found none. Major Ezekiel Butterfield.

Burns documentaries are always a series of melodramatic quotes interspersed with occasional narration. They are acclaimed garbage. Drama is not documentary.

[kozmon0t]

:06-:16 Loath as I was to take up arms against fellow Americans, I could not but do my sacred duty for my beloved Virginia. Robert E. Lee.

:17-:26 I arrived at Manassas to find our army in disarray and our men fleeing. I said to them, what the hell's wrong with you - kill some damn Yankees! Brigadier Gen. Joseph Johnston

:27-:50 We thought the Yankees might be fooled if half our men wore blue, but they fired canisters and took a wretched toll. A melancholy, hopeless charge. Private L. Jones.

[Ypsiroselee]

@EdwardRommel I don't Ken Burns would claim the Ken Burns Effect, either. If you have the DVDs with "The making of the Civil War" on them, he's most pleased with the quality of the ensemble cast, and especially with having Shelby Foote appear throughout.

[733835]

@cosycleaner

Correct about Ken Morse, he`s been doing his stuff for as long as I can remember.

[lazero7]

@XFuncCaRteR He never said Ken Burns invented the effect, he just popularized it. The name just stuck to the effect because he used it all the time. Like the "Hitchcock zoom"

[EdwardRommel]

@wwwwolf

Burns is credited with the documentary technique of slowing panning over still photos and using narrators....but really that system has been used since the 1960's...like in the BBC's "The Great War" from 1964 and narrated by Michael Redgrave.

So though I love Burn's "The Civil War"...I don't think he really created anything new and novel.

[62Serhildan]

The Ken Burns Effect is also in the new iPhone HD =D